Slashdot

andrewmin writes "Recently, Gnome's been gaining a lot of ground on its KDE counterpart in the desktop environment wars. The KDE developers were hoping to change this with KDE 4, the new radical release of KDE, but it was not to be. KDE 4.0 was buggy and unstable, leaving everyone except the hard-core KDE lovers. Mainly, this was because it just didn't work most of the time. However, the developers were not without hope. They promised that KDE 4.1 would be more stable and fix all the holes and problems with KDE 4.0. That time is coming soon: in just four days, K Desktop Environment 4.1 will be released to the Linux masses." A release candidate for 4.1 came out just over a week ago, with binaries available "for some Linux distributions, and Mac OS X and Windows."

gbjbaanb writes "Ars Technica reports that Microsoft is to sponsor the Apache Foundation to the tune of $100k. From the article: 'I asked him if this could possibly be the beginning of a broader initiative by Microsoft to increase Apache compatibility with .NET web development technologies, but he says it's still too early to guess Microsoft's future plans for Apache participation. ... He doesn't anticipate a confrontational response from the developers working on individual Apache projects ... The response of the broader open source software community, however, is harder to predict.' (In related news, MS also intends to participate in the RubySpec project.)"

creyes123 writes "I run a free website with an online model airplane design calculator. The number of registered users has quickly climbed and I've gotten many compliments. Out of nowhere, a fellow shows up and proceeds to bad mouth the calculator in a posting in one of my forums. After I politely point out that he's mistaken and should have looked at the documentation before posting, he changes the subject and bad mouths a different 'flaw.' The cycle repeats a few more times, with no apparent end in sight. I want to encourage folks to share their opinions, but constructive criticism was clearly not his goal. I feel that the whole episode was just a massive time waster for me. What did I do to deserve this? Could I have handled this better?"

RevWaldo contributes a link to an AP story carried by Google, according to which "The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff Wednesday: Limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer. The warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, is contrary to numerous studies that don't find a link between cancer and cell phone use, and a public lack of worry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration." RevWaldo continues: "One possible solution offered? 'Use a wireless headset.' No risk of EM exposure from one of them, no sirree!"

skeazer writes "Tucked away in a 1,200-page bill now in Congress is a small paragraph that could lead distance-education institutions to require spy cameras in their students' homes. It sounds Orwellian, but the paragraph — part of legislation renewing the Higher Education Act — is all but assured of becoming law by the fall. No one in Congress objects to it."

An anonymous reader writes "The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc. In a series of cases including In re Nuijten, In re Comiskey and In re Bilski, the Patent and Trademark Office has argued in favor of imposing new restrictions on the scope of patentable subject matter set forth by Congress in article 101 of the Patent Act. In the most recent of these three — the currently pending en banc Bilski appeal — the Office takes the position that process inventions generally are unpatentable unless they 'result in a physical transformation of an article' or are 'tied to a particular machine.'"

The Stropp's World blog has an interesting editorial of the pros and cons for open sourcing MMOs, especially those that have "died." Stropp examines both sides of the issue and makes some compelling arguments. "So, there are some good reasons for a company to open source the game that it is soon to retire, and there are a couple of good reasons against. What to do? If opening up the client is not an option, open up the server code. This would allow the open source community to take the software, install it on a community server and open it up to the fans. Other players might want to grab the source and create their own private servers, perhaps with different rule sets for PvP and the like. The life of the game could be extended for years, supporting a thriving community."

Kotaku recently had a chance to sit down and run Molyneux's new Fable game through its paces. Fable II is set as an action RPG, and while the combat options were somewhat limited, there is an implied depth that is definitely going to be worth a look. "Molyneux showed off some of the game's Expressions, the silly jigs and smooth moves that let you woo ladies and forge new friendships, prior to our hands-on. You'll pick them from a radial menu when you want to take a wife or receive a gift. They were fairly limited in our demo of the game, but look to provide some welcome options for adding variety to the game world. You'll see non-playable characters throughout town that you can interact with using Expressions, each with icons over their heads indicating their disposition. Wow them with your moves and you'll reap the rewards."

chareverie writes "A law just passed in New York now requires labels for violent content in video games that are already rated, as well as having parent-controlled lockout features installed in consoles by 2010. The law has caused an uproar with civil rights groups who claim that such a law is unconstitutional. A legal challenge is already in the works by the New York Civil Liberties Union who cite that similar laws that have been brought to courts in California, Illinois, Minessota, and Washington state have been deemed as unconstitutional. NYCLU legislative director Robert Perry also says that the 'new law is a "back door" way of regulating video game content.'"

Roland Piquepaille found news of research out of Portugal that has resulted in the first paper-based transistors (the original article is less informative than Roland's blog). More precisely, they've made the first field effect transistors (FET) with a paper interstrate layer. According to the research team, such transistors offer the same level of performance as 'state-of-the-art, oxide-based thin film transistors produced on glass or crystalline silicon substrates.' Possible applications include disposable electronics devices, such as paper displays, smart labels, bio-applications or RFID tags. The research will be published in IEEE Electron Device Letters in September.

Coach Wei writes "Community voting results and a summary report have been published from OpenAjax Alliance's recent "community wishlist for future browsers" effort. When the voting closed on July 13th, 222 people participated in this open community initiative, with 143 people voted, 55 feature requests being written up, and contribution from many industry leaders. The voting indentified and prioritized 37 features. The top 10 are related to vector graphics, security, performance, layout, rich text editing, Comet, audio and video. Among all the feature requests, 2D Drawing/Vector Graphics is clearly the most desired feature by the community. It received most votes (110 people voted for it), and highest total score (over 10% higher than the second feature request). Looks like that it is time for all browsers, in particular, IE, to seriously consider supporting standards-based vector graphics."

An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from the Victoria Times Colonist: "After a remarkable 37-year experiment, University of Alberta scientist David Schindler and his colleagues have finally nailed down the chemical triggers for a problem that plagues thousands of freshwater and coastal ecosystems around the world." Punchline: "Phosphorus."

DangerFace writes "A little while ago some Dutch researchers cracked the Oyster card, meaning they could get free public transport around London. The company that makes the cards, NXP, sought and got an injunction to stop the exploit being published, but that has now been overruled by a Dutch judge. The lovely Dutch blokes are holding off from releasing the hack for the time being, to give NXP time to secure their systems."

ruphus13 writes "The Pwnie Awards, an 'annual awards ceremony celebrating and making fun of the achievements and failures of security researchers and the wider security community' announced their 2008 nominees. From their site, 'The final list of nominees for the nine Pwnie Award categories is finally published. We've received some really good submissions and it was not an easy task to narrow them down to five nominees per category, but we hope that we've done a good job. The next step for the Pwnie Awards judges will gather in an undisclosed location prior to the award ceremony and vote on the winners.'"

With Blizzard's Wrath of the Lich King NDA out of the way, there has been the inevitable flood of information about the new expansion hitting the streets. One of the most sought-after pieces of information is anything about the new class being introduced, the Death Knight. Massively has a great summary, with video examples, of the three different avenues available to the Death Knight. From the AE strengths of unholy, to the life-stealing blood tree, to the control of the frost tree, it seems that this new juggernaut is certainly going to be a force to be reckoned with.